by Caroline Keane
Olympia is known as a place for radicals, queers, and weirdos. People are attracted from all over the country to move here or attend Evergreen. Olympia’s dwindling Evergreen population is transient by nature. Rents are rising, making this city less liveable. Any communities or public spaces that existed prior to the pandemic must have been affected by it. According to the 2019 census, Olympia is 82% white, 47% of homes are occupied by a homeowner, 43% of residents over 25 have a bachelor’s degree, and 15% of residents live in poverty. Community is a vague concept with several different meanings. It can describe the place you live, the place you work, a hobby, an online space. It can be weaponized or inspire great comradery. CPJ decided to explore the concept of community and what it means here in Olympia.
CPJ independently interviewed two community members, Teal, a Mexican community activist and local DJ. You can follow them on Instagram @4siemprebruja. Their roommate Jacob, worker-owner in a worker co-op and DJ, also weighed in. We also spoke with Carl, a French and Spanish teacher, and transplant from Texas. Despite these being two separate conversations with two people who aren’t acquainted, the two interviews seemed to be in conversation with one another.
Carl: Growing up I was always part of subcultures and I didn’t really think of them as communities. They were always specific cultures to be not necessarily invited into, but acculturated into, you kind of worked your way into them.
CPJ: How is community different from subculture?
Carl: In a subculture there is an idea that there is more uniformity, maybe. Even if it’s not conformity, it is at least commonality. Maybe community is more pluralistic. There are some elements that are more distinctly different and not totally in agreement. Maybe there are some aspects of community that you can’t change like a family or something, a subculture if you don’t like them, maybe you are supposed to go somewhere else. There are certain communities you are a part of and you don’t choose to be a part of.
Teal: What was so intense was seeing how particular it is here, and how if you don’t have exactly the language in the same way, people push you out. If you are a communist, you are the enemy. If you don’t know exactly the lingo you are the enemy. It’s kind of fascist in their anarchy ways, and that to me made me feel very isolated and very lonely for a long time. It didn’t feel entirely like people would validate me. Not that I need the validation, but how am I really that uncool? How? And I’ve been in radical spaces in different countries for a very long time, and I come here and I’m like really, nothing? Like, really there’s no space for me, how is that? After understanding and building my own tight knit group of people having conversations about it, I realized it wasn’t a personal thing, it’s not about me. It’s not me. So something clicked in me. I was sick of conforming and being quiet about it, and me being the one to leave or conform, or do the labor to address it. So I’m going to take up as much space as I can, and either you conform, we talk, or you leave if you’re uncomfortable with this. I feel like all those microaggressions (which I dont believe in because they are all aggressions) that keep popping off for me and my friends that aren’t white, kind of feels like fuck these people, it’s exhausting..I do dream of a world, like how can we..there’s different ways to move around in the world and there’s bigger enemies and there’s ways of showing up for each other that is not just theory based, but talking about how to actually care for each other and get our emotional needs met and mental health needs met. And physical needs, etc, etc.
Carl: Isolation is just one kind of being in our community, but that possibility is created by our community. Not all kinds of communities have the same possibility for the same kind of isolation that can exist in our community. Even when we feel alone, that is a social feeling, that’s not an isolated feeling. Feeling not enough community is actually a feeling created by your community that’s not actually like a personal shortcoming, or you’re lacking these certain connections in your life, it’s a possibility created by the community you already are a part of. That’s what helps me feel more confident not just being self critical, but critical of the community that’s not able to provide everything I need all the time…I would like, with other people to engage with that community on purpose, not just accidentally or sometimes together or incidentally combined, but on purpose, having things that me and some people agree on .
CPJ: What do you expect or need from your community?
Carl: I think what I expect from them is to be caught off guard or challenged or pushed knowing that doesn’t make it more good or comfortable when that happens. I think that in a lot of ways what I do trust the community to be doing is sort of like not necessarily saying the things I won’t say to myself, but complicating things in ways I wouldn’t complicate them. Being held accountable on a personal level, even if it’s in a way that might hurt someone’s feelings, maybe isn’t a problem that could be solved, but is incorporated. One way I think of community is sort of an and. So it’s me and, it’s me and the other people, and the place where we are and there’s no but there’s only adding more to it. I think of other people as being responsible for bringing a lot more to the table than I’m going to bring. When I get to the table, I expect there to be a lot there. That’s what I need, other people to genuinely be bringing stuff there that maybe they don’t think there’s a reason or a purpose for, but I’m kind of expecting more there than I can deal with or provide or imagine. The community can present us with a complexity that we don’t think is there, but is there in our subjective perspective also. We also aren’t as ironed out as we think we are, but the community gives us this kind of uncompromising complexity that I think reminds us on a personal level. I’m pretty complex and I’m bringing a lot of complexity to this. I can remind myself to give myself more space to do what I’m doing if I remind myself to give others more space to do what they are doing.
CPJ: What does community mean to you?
Teal: Community means emotional and social responsibility to one another. And community to me is friendship. I take my relationships, in general, very, very seriously. To me, it’s like even though fuck the institution of marriage, I use it as like, I marry my friends.
CPJ: It’s a commitment.
Teal: I’m committed through thick or thin and we’re not just going to do fun things, sometimes we are going to go through hard times and I’m going to do my best to be there and support you.
Being in a community to me is friendship, maybe there are different levels of intimacy that you have, but if anybody…even if we haven’t had one on one conversations says I need this, I got it, and if I don’t I’m on it to figure out who can. I’m there to show up in ways that won’t be as entirely comfortable for me, but I’m going to try and figure it out. Community is being a good friend, honestly…that’s why in Olympia I felt like I had no community because all people wanted to talk to me about is theory, but to me, we’re not really friends. I know we’ve talked at Burial Grounds for hours and hours about shit, but like
CPJ: Nobody really asks how you are doing.
Teal: And if you did you didn’t really mean it because like when I would say I’m actually really sad today, people would get really uncomfortable and be like, oh I have to go…I did it wrong, how dare I put it on them.
Jacob: They just venmo you for the emotional labor.
Teal: Community is being friends and having emotional and social responsibility with one another and accountability. Telling someone when they fucked up is an act of love. When somebody does that to me and tells me, hey, what you said was inappropriate or shitty, hey you love me enough to put that emotional labor on.
Jacob: I so agree deeply that letting someone know when they’re fucking up is an act of love, but I feel it is also important, and we don’t always see this in Olympia, is doing it lovingly. It’s not letting someone know they fucked up and letting everyone else know they fucked up, and not to talk to them. Being direct about it and being like hey, you have caused harm in some way, how do we fix it or have accountability around it.
Teal: Being honest, being part of any friendship is being honest, like I don’t have the time or energy or space to do this, but not just being like I don’t have the time and space, but being honest and saying that and not overextending yourself or putting yourself in a situation you will resent or the other person, but also not just be like oh I can’t do it I’m sorry and walk away. Instead to see if you can find maybe someone else and set it up rather than just saying Oh, I can’t, self care. Sure, you do need to do that, but also that doesn’t mean it’s up to you to fend for yourself, I’m going to just abandon you because I can’t help you.
CPJ: It sounds like you’re speaking to an intentionality of how you engage with your community, can you speak more to that?
Carl: I think of that as being related to ethics, and for me personally a sort of understanding of the difference between our personal morality and our ethics is more how we interact with others and how we allow space for other peoples’ morality. My ideal way of interacting with the community is with some other people that I’ve been able to find agreement with, then to come up with ways of interacting that we think are ethical. And we don’t think are coercive or authoritative or exploitative and definitely not exclusive.
Some of that intentionality means going through your closer relationships and not trying to insert yourself in the middle of a community without relationships. That means not all relationships in the community can be as intimate or full of trust, but they can be equally full of ethics and respect…As leftists, or maybe just as radicals in general, we can sometimes be very subcultural and not think of things in an actually potential way, we aren’t thinking of the potential of community, but kind of just trying to set requirements for community, norms that are clearly defined, which is different than ethical standards, standards for relationships are different than standards for behavior. The behavior would still need to be open to being all kinds of things and people bringing that to the table. Without cancelling that out, how do we still make those standards for our relationships with each other?
Jacob: How do you show up for each other in community and be a good friend? I always come back to how Bell Hooks defines love, love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, respect and trust. What I love about it is that it’s about the act of love, it’s not I feel this way, it’s how do I, these are the ways if I feel love I bring it into the world and make it real. It really is very, if we love people, we feel a sense of responsibility. Again, when they fuck up we don’t just be like yuck I’m not going to touch that, I dont want to be associated with that, we have some sense of responsibility, we care about them. We genuinely know people, we don’t just know them on a surface level. I love that definition because it’s about action, ways we actually show up for people in the real world.
Teal: The act of love, respect, commitment, trust, responsibility with each other and just deep friendships and honesty is a big one for me. My wildest dreams are kind of coming true right now. Having friends that we feel comfortable asking for what we need and knowing that it will be received in the best of ways and that there are people out there to try and figure out how to meet your needs and vice-versa, have that mutual understanding. A community that dances together stays together, that expression of the bodies and the souls, in a way, is a deep way of connection. Being actually seen and witnessed by your community and vice, versa, and your vulnerability and not in just a way of I’m going to tell you about my feelings, but being vulnerable in so many different ways is the biggest key for this, and seeing each other, witnessing each other, and helping each other grow, but also find joy in life. I think anger and frustration is big, and it’s important it’s a powerful thing, but I think we need to help each other find joy and be happy and lighthearted and laugh, and feed each other physically and also our souls.
Community is where you find yourself and what you put into it. Community isn’t about setting standards of conformity, but standards for how we care for each other and ourselves, as members of a community. Honoring that connection even when it is less visible to us. Knowing that we are always connected and the choices that we make matter. How we honor ourselves and each other matters. Community is reflection within yourself and your community, where are my expectations of others coming from? Find community. Bring your authentic self, your skills, your fears, your vulnerability, and know that you never are alone.
